CEO Espresso Interview: Rohit Jha

Question: Tell us briefly about Transcelestial and your role as CEO.

Answer: Transcelestial is focused on space-based infrastructure — satellites, security, and how we protect data and systems in orbit. I founded the company after working in both government and academia, and we’re trying to bridge that gap: deep tech, but practical applications.

Our mission is to make space-based data more secure, especially in the context of national security. My job involves a bit of everything: strategy, partnerships, and translating technical innovation into something relevant for governments.

If you could give advice to your younger self as a CEO, what would that be?

That’s a tough one — because the mistakes were just as important as the things we got right. But if I had to say something, it would be to have more confidence in expanding earlier. I would have pushed into the U.S. market sooner, entered the defense and intelligence vertical earlier, and started our space activities earlier. Those moves turned out to be really high-leverage for us — in terms of sales momentum, product adoption, and overall growth.

When you say you would have gone into certain markets and verticals sooner, what was the reason for that hesitance?

I think this applies to many early-stage startups, especially outside the U.S. The U.S. market is just fundamentally different. It offers unmatched access to risk-free capital and has a speed of enterprise adoption that’s hard to find in Europe or Asia. American executives tend to be more confident — they’re willing to bet big even if something works just 1% of the time, if the upside is large enough. That mindset gives them an edge.

We started in Singapore, which is great for going from zero to one. But when you scale — Series A, Series B — you have to go global, and the U.S. makes a big difference. Once we entered the U.S., especially in defense and space, we realized we should have done it earlier. Clients in those verticals quickly saw we were ahead of even the biggest names. Those contracts came faster and were larger than what we had spent years building with telcos.

Would you say that difference in decision-making speed is more about mindset or regulatory environment?

100% mindset. It’s not about external factors — it’s internal. American executives are more willing to take calculated risks. If something has a small chance of working but the payoff is huge, they lean in heavily. That kind of thinking is less common elsewhere.

What role do negotiations play for you personally?

As a CEO and founder, you end up in four kinds of negotiations regularly:

1. Sales contracts
2. Fundraising — whether with banks or VCs
3. Internal negotiations — with your exec team and employees around compensation
4. And, well, your mother — who wants you to get married earlier!

(Joking aside…) the toughest, especially in the early days, is the internal one — negotiating with your team. Every dollar you raise has to be utilized in the best possible manner to give you that outsized momentum that you need. And you’re asking people to sacrifice — on lifestyle, on financial stability — in exchange for equity. And let’s be honest, early-stage private equity is almost meaningless on paper. It’s particularly hard because you’re not really on opposite sides. You’re in it together, and yet you’re saying: “We can’t afford another 10% raise.” But once that conversation ends, you’re back side-by-side, pushing the business forward. That tension is real — and hard to manage until the company grows, salaries stabilize, and secondary options become available.

How big is your team currently?

We’re 35 people at the moment. And honestly, it’s been a challenge to stay lean. For a company at our stage — with our revenue and having raised $32 million publicly — many others would have scaled much faster in headcount. But that can outpace revenue momentum. Our culture has been to stay deep and focused. People here work hard, carry a lot of load — but they’re also paid really well.

And externally — how do you build and maintain customer relationships?

The same principles apply to customers — and to a slightly lesser extent, to investors as well. Even when you’re negotiating hard, you know you’ll be working with these people afterwards. So we use what I call a “lead by honesty” approach. We’re transparent — especially when it comes to pricing. If someone says the price is too high, I lay out the full breakdown: here are the 10 things we’re doing for you, here’s why it costs what it does. Then I hand them a pen and say, “Strike out what you don’t want.” What ends up happening is they start negotiating with themselves. They realize, “If I remove support for Year 2, who’s going to handle issues then?” So it becomes a constructive conversation — and it works across cultures.

We use the same approach with investors: here’s the amount we need, here’s what we’ll achieve with it, and here’s what it means for equity and employee motivation. If you reduce the cash, we can’t hit the same milestones — and that has downstream effects.

It also works well internally when discussing comp. We lay it all out — salary, healthcare, equity — and ask people what matters most to them. Sometimes someone just had a kid and healthcare matters more than a raise. That openness helps us tailor solutions that work.

That sounds like a very proactive approach to handling objections.

Mostly, yes. But you still get thrown into reactive situations sometimes. Especially in sales. There have been times where we’ve agreed on certain terms — even right before entering the room — and once we’re inside, the terms have changed.

For example, in the defense sector recently, we had a situation where we discussed pricing and scope with someone high up before a formal meeting. He trimmed the scope to match his budget authority. Then inside the room, with his team present, he said, “They’ve agreed to this price, and as a stretch goal, they’ll also deliver A, B, C, D…” And I was thinking, ‘That is not what we discussed!’ But in that moment, you can’t just call someone out — not in front of their team, and certainly not in front of their superiors. You have to manage the situation with care.

I guess cultural context plays a big role — you might handle that differently depending on the region?

Definitely — but not always in the way people think. We work across Southeast Asia, India, Japan, Taiwan, Europe, and the U.S. And here’s the surprising part: People think Americans are very direct and transactional — no small talk, no ego. That’s a myth. U.S. sales is just as relationship-driven as anywhere else. You still need to get on a plane, meet people in person, shake hands, build trust. They have egos, too — just like executives in Asia or Europe. Sure, in Asia there might be more formalities — more dinners and rituals — but don’t underestimate how much relationship-building matters everywhere. That’s universal.

So would you say company cultures differ more than national cultures?

Absolutely. Let me give you an example — we were working on a project with Facebook. We interacted with teams from Facebook Korea, Facebook Singapore, and Facebook U.S., and honestly, it felt like one homogeneous team. Same values, same openness, same way of communicating. It really felt like you were talking to the same company everywhere.

But then we worked with SK Telecom in Korea — a much more traditional Korean company. Their office was literally next door to Facebook’s, and staffed by the same kind of local talent — Koreans — but the experience was completely different. So it wasn’t the nationality that drove the difference; it was the company culture.

Right — so the differences between companies are greater than the differences between countries?

Exactly. One of our early board members used to run the largest reseller business for Cisco gear in Asia. He told me how Cisco used to expand into new regions: they didn’t just hire someone local and call them “Head of India” or “Head of Germany.” Instead, they would send someone from the U.S. who had already been fully immersed in Cisco’s culture. That person would be given a one-way ticket, a fax machine, and told to start building the business from scratch in the new market.

Google and Facebook eventually adopted the same playbook. They’d take a trusted exec who understood the company deeply and have them establish the culture abroad — even if only temporarily. They’d then groom someone local, but the cultural foundation was already in place. A lot of companies — including those run by friends of mine — skip that. They just hire a “Head of Australia” straight from the market. And honestly, that often doesn’t work. You need that internal cultural transmission, not just a local title.

What is, for you, the best indicator in your daily routine that reflects a healthy company culture?

There are a lot of things, but I’ll focus on the top three that have evolved into core values for us.

First: No one at Transcelestial is just a manager. Every single leader is also an individual contributor. Our Head of Software still writes code. Our Head of Hardware can build the entire product from scratch. This is something we’ve taken inspiration from companies like Bell Labs and other valley companies, where technical leadership is hands-on. We used to distribute the book “The Idea Factory” amongst all new joiners to make sure they understood. One of our earliest angel investors was actually one of the first check into SpaceX, so we’ve had some visibility into that world. In deep tech and hardware, it’s even more essential — because unlike software, where you might get away with pure managers, the complexity of physical products and supply chains means you really need leaders who can contribute directly. When I go into other companies and don’t see that, I honestly don’t have high hopes for their future.

Second: Leadership must be connected to the grassroots. We emphasize something I call “skip levels”. It’s the idea that senior leaders should be connected to what’s happening a couple of layers down — not just through reporting lines, but through real understanding. If you pull in an intern or a junior engineer and ask a VP what that person is working on, they should have a pretty good idea. In most business literature, that kind of involvement is dismissed as micromanaging. But I think that’s how innovation dies. The best ideas often come from the youngest, newest people in the company — those with the freshest perspectives. If leadership doesn’t know what they’re working on, that’s a missed opportunity.

We had an advisor, Tony Fadell, who used to work with Steve Jobs on the design team, and he shared how Steve would go home, have dinner, and then come back to Apple late at night to walk the halls. From 11 p.m. to 2 a.m., he’d tap people on the shoulder and ask, “What are you working on?” And for off-sites, he didn’t just take his leadership team — he handpicked 30 people from across the company who were really lynchpins: engineers, QA, designers. People he trusted to shape the future of the product. That’s the kind of deep connection we try to emulate. And if I don’t see that in a company, to me, it’s a red flag. We actively encourage that across all our leadership.

Third: Balance the present with a 20-year future vision — especially for product companies. There’s this mantra — “the customer is king” — and it’s drilled into CEOs, product managers, and leaders. But we had to unlearn that to some extent. If you’re building a product (not a service), you can’t let today’s customer needs fully dictate your roadmap. Mature products, maybe. But real product innovation needs dual focus:

• Next 6 months: Driven by your top clients’ urgent needs. Solving these unlocks immediate revenue.
• Next 20 years: You must imagine the future — even if it seems fantastical. In our case, it’s about communications. We asked: What will communication look like in a world of space travel and flying cars? We realized that laser communications will be essential. So now we work backward: what do we need in 3 years to make that future possible? We call it forward-looking or future-looking. It’s about avoiding the trap of “faster horses” when what’s really needed is “cars.”

When do you consider yourself successful as a CEO?

That’s a tough one — especially because of the framework I shared earlier. The goalpost keeps shifting. The downside is, you rarely get to sit back, open a beer and just enjoy the moment. But the upside? You get to spend years working on extremely cool products, and you can’t imagine doing anything else.

If I had to define success right now, I’d say we have two main goals:

1. Market leadership in the U.S. telco space.
   We’ve raised $40 million publicly. And in less than a year, we’ve become an important vendor for T-Mobile, AT&T, and Charter — major U.S. telcos. That’s incredibly rare for a company from Asia. Except for Razer (which makes gaming peripherals), I can’t think of any Asian company that’s entered and owned the U.S. market in this space. In the next 48 months, we aim to scale nationwide with these players. If we do that, we’ll have written the playbook on how to crack a large Western market from Asia. That’s one major benchmark of success for me.

2. Executing on our 50-year vision for space infrastructure.
   We’ve secretly been testing our products in space — funded entirely through our own revenue. In October, we’re launching a new laser communication test in partnership with the Spanish space agency (Catalonia Space). It will include Spain’s first optical ground station in Barcelona with 10-gigabit-per-second on the laser backbone.
   If all goes according to plan by April, we’ll be the only company with the capability to route hundreds of gigabits or terabits of data anywhere — even the most remote villages. That would be a huge milestone for us.

That’s fascinating — especially how your answers immediately focus on large-scale, industry-shaping outcomes. On a personal level, what skills or areas of expertise are you currently working on?

Great question. I’ve been writing code since I was 10 — mostly games — so I’ve always considered myself a strong programmer. But the rise of the AI ecosystem has been incredibly humbling. These models churn out code in minutes. I had to prove to myself that I could keep up.

So earlier this year, when we publicly launched our space business, I decided to dick back one evening and put myself to the test: I challenged myself to build the entire transcelestial.space website using only AI — no manual coding. That included everything: design, wireframing, text. It took me about 20 to 30 hours using what the kids now call “vibe coding” — basically prompting an LLM to write the code.

Since then, we’ve made AI literacy mandatory for all new hires. I want every team member to be highly productive using these free tools. This isn’t a gimmick. Billions have been invested in these models — and if you can’t leverage that in your job, I question whether you’re truly adding value.

And I don’t just push the team — I’m leading by example. I’m personally learning how to use AI in coding, design, and marketing. We do rapid design iterations for campaigns using AI. I’ve had to get my hands dirty with creating X (Twitter) and YouTube content.

The worst thing execs do in big companies? They sign up for some AI course at Stanford or INSEAD. But the field is evolving so fast, your best teachers today are YouTube and X — not some $50K executive program.